Who thought? Who knew? Who even slightly pondered that psychedelic music would be staging the modern comeback that it has? What’s most impressive is the form that psychedelic music has presently taken, in the form of a cross-genre hodgepodge of seemingly unrelated music formats that bear almost no aesthetic similarities other than the mutual embrace of the psych. I remember first delving into psych music in the early 2000s when the mid-to-late-90s psychedelic scene had long ago crested, listening to “The Sounds of Psychedelphia”, filled with anger toward my parents for not popping me out five years earlier. Alas, here we are in 2011, this album is a current Eureka! pick, psych is back hard, and I can finally, after all this time, forgive my parents.

So who better than long-standing purveyor of psych (even when it wasn’t cool) Three Lobed to document this moment in history with a killer comp featuring the top tier of artists representing the ultimate in mindfuck music. Not the Spaces You Know, But Between Them will be released at an indefinite date this summer as a 4xLP box set featuring such prestigious artists as Sun City Girls, Sonic Youth, Comets on Fire, Mouthus, Bardo Pond, D. Charles Speer, Wooden Wand, Steve Gunn, and Eternal Tapestry, with each artist getting a whole side of vinyl to themselves (besides Wooden Wand and D. Charles Speer, who share a side). The set comes with four distinct and separate inner sleeves for each record, an insert bearing some written word from the notorious Marc Masters, a free download card, and the whole thing (minus the Sun City Girls selection) was mastered by Patrick Klem. These things look hella killer and there’s only gonna be 700 of these puppies pressed. Meaning you can roll over to the Three Lobed website and preorder the set, see a more detailed tracklisting, and read about how felines influenced the whole process.

Who are Disappears? Disappears are whoever you want them to be, baby. Are they Krautrock? Are they garage rock? Facts are scant, but we do know that the band consists of 90 Day Men’s Brian Case, Graeme Gibson, and at times, John Dwyer of Thee Oh Sees and Steve Shelley of Sonic Youth. Shelley appears on Disappears’ most recent album, Guider (TMT Review), which came out in January on Kranky. The band will be hitting the road to rep Guider this summer.

Joining Disappears on tour will be The Psychic Paramount, an experimental band from New York who just snuck into our “Favorite 100 Albums of 2000-2009” list. Toward the end of Disappears’ great American roadtrip, they’ll meet up with Obits, who’ve got a little record of their own to show off, Moody, Standard and Poor, available now on Sub Pop.

This time last spring, the K Records/Anacortes staple Karl Blau shocked all of us earnest, lo-fi, indie-loving listeners by joining Earth on bass for their tour with Wolves in the Throne Room and on their new record — a collaboration so random, so incongruous, that by the time Phil Elverum himself (the beloved mountain man behind The Microphones/Mount Eerie) appeared at the last show, we just about lost it and resigned ourselves to classical jazz for a month.

It’s clear, then, that Karl Blau has been busy since releasing his “Africa”-influenced full-length, Zebra, in 2009. To prove his industriousness, he has a new EP coming out through K Records on May 10. The 12-inch, Max, consists of four tracks and some interesting arrangements (the first song features no vocals at all, and Blau’s clear voice combined with subtle strings on track two are just a tad reminiscent of Arthur Russell). This month, Blau begins a tour, soon accompanied by Little Wings (who also have a new record!). To my great surprise, the tour ventures outside of the West Coast — but only to the Gulf and Georgia, at which point Karl high-tails it back to Washington. Go figure.

You know, I always wondered how Prince felt about Dump’s ‘tribute’ album That Skinny Motherfucker with the High Pitched Voice?; Yo La Tengo’s James McNew covers a dozen Prince tracks, from “Raspberry Beret” to what is possibly the most depressing version of “Pop Life” ever (and yes, it’s a real downer to begin with). Now, if you watched Prince’s recent interview on Lopez Tonight, you know the answer. Minneapolis’s favorite son has always been protective of his work, but what he told George Lopez the other night goes a little beyond a regular ‘Mother Hen’ complex. In the music industry, the compulsory licensing law gives artists the right to rework other musicians’ songs. Apparently, Prince would prefer that it be downright illegal for anyone to cover his songs — which puts a damper on my friend’s college cover band, Erotic City, or any band that wants to record “When You Were Mine” for a crowd-pleasing throwaway track. Watch the full interview here.

“Covering music means your version doesn’t exist anymore. A lot of times people think I’m doing Sinead O’Connor’s song or Chaka Khan’s song when in fact I wrote those songs. … There’s this thing called compulsory licensing law that allows artists through the record companies to take your music at will without your permission,” Prince griped to George Lopez. “And that doesn’t exist in any other art form, be it books, movies. There’s only one version of Law & Order. There’s several versions of ‘Kiss’ and ‘Purple Rain’.” Solid logic, Prince. Bottom line: if you’re a fan or a personal friend, whatever. If you’re in the industry, hands off Prince!

Warning: The following article features several instances of the slang word for fecal matter, and awkwardly repeats the word as if this were an episode of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia. Thank you.

Though many shit-scholars will argue that The Beatles were the first shitgaze band, many shitty youth find comfort in the shitful sounds of lo-fi noise pop shitters, Psychedelic Horseshit, from that first shit-out 7-inch “Who Let the Dogs Out?” to last year’s Acid Tape, which took shit to another level.

Recently the “shitboys” signed to the shit-label FatCat and prepped their new shitty album Laced for May 10. Now these bitchshits are having a bunch of shit-shows with other shitty bands like Best Coast, Dirty Beaches, and DJ Dog Dick.

From the very beginning, Calvin Johnson’s K Records label let it be known that if you wanted to play music, you could — and if you wanted to play music, you could get it released. Its output has spanned from Johnson’s own über-DIY band Beat Happening to punk, twee, and experimental weirdos like Old Time Relijun. K’s newest release deviates even more from the lo-fi grab bag we’ve come to expect: a hip-hop album from Eprhyme!

Dopestylevsky will be Eprhyme’s (pronounced e-prime) second full-length, and his first with K. The press release declares that this is “the first hip hop album to come on K Records in over a decade,” but try as I might, I couldn’t think of any hip-hop album to precede Eprhyme on K, with the exception of two Eprhyme 7-inches they put out in 2008 and 2009 — which is kind of like using a word in its own definition. Of course, being on K Records, this isn’t your normal brand of hip-hop. In 2009, Eprhyme put out his debut, Waywordwonderwill, on Shemspeed, a genre-bending reggae/rock/rap, world/Jewish label in Brooklyn, and (again, according to the press release, which phrases it best), it was an “around the world audio tour of the Jewish Diaspora, as well as an in-depth exploration of Contemporary Jewish American experience and identity.” One more quote from the press release, and then we’ll put it away: “Eprhyme is also one-half of the Musical Midrash Project Darshan, whih combines Hip Hop with Hebrew Chant, Folk-Rock with Electro-Pop and Love Poetry with Kabbalistic Psychology.” You just can’t make up that kind of stuff.

Kind of weird to be hobnobbing with Calvin and Karl Blau, right? (Well, maybe not so weird if you consider Chain & The Gang a political band — but who actually does that?) All I have left to say is that you should watch the official video for the song “Punklezmerap” to get a better idea. Crash, like glass at a wedding.

Dopestylevsky is out on April 26, and if you’re as intrigued as I am by this video of Eprhyme performing in a London synagogue, you can see him in action on an upcoming tour.